"Sun Don't Shine" - Film Review
Sun Don’t Shine begins with a fight. Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and Leo (Kentucker Audley) are on a dusty back road in Central Florida screaming at each other. This abrupt beginning to the movie is so jarring that the audience expects a quick transition to a scene with a “four hours earlier” title card to explain how they got here. Instead, the film moves forward with a sense of unease in every scene. It’s stifling, like the Florida humidity that radiates from the screen.
Director/writer Amy Seimetz clearly has no interest in making the audience feel comfortable. Sun Don’t Shine appears to be a familiar lovers-on-the-run story, but the audience doesn’t know what Crystal and Leo are running from. There’s just an ever-increasing anxiety that builds within the couple’s Oldsmobile as they make their way from Tampa to the Everglades. Crystal and Leo are swapping out license plates, burning old clothes, and hiding from the cops, but the journey to the reason for the anxiety and the alibis is a slow burn. Even when the audience discovers the reason the couple is on the run, there are more secrets that come to light.
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Sun Don’t Shine feels like a sun-drenched noir film. The movie trades the dark shadows of a traditional noir film for the equally off-putting eternal sunshine of Florida. There has always been an inherent uninviting nature to Central Florida, mainly because of the artificiality of the garish motels and inns that cluster along the swampy, palm-tree-lined roads. The omnipresent, super-corporate theme parks that offer a faux sense of happiness only add to this feeling. In reality, the secrets hidden within the Sunshine State are far more ghastly.
Seimetz grew up around Tampa-St. Petersburg and attended Florida State University in Tallahassee. Her intimate knowledge of Florida comes into clear focus as Crystal and Leo roam around the state known for escapism while their own chance of freedom slips further and further away. Seimetz’s camera lingers on the vast, empty landscape, compounding the isolation of Crystal and Leo. It’s impossible not to see Seimetz’s interpretation of Florida as a nightmare where everything the light touches is tinged with darkness. Sun Don’t Shine was released in 2013, and more recent films like Zola and The Florida Project carry on the unsettling enigma that is Florida. Seimetz is perfectly poised to tell this story about cyclical abuse that plays out during a futile road trip across the unhappiest place on Earth.
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